The overall advancement of a business in achieving its goals and objectives heavily depends on the skills and capabilities of the senior management teams. Many business scholars opine that senior managers play even more vital role as leaders in the context of a small and medium size enterprise. Before we discuss more about the importance of a leader’s role in a contemporary small or medium size business organization, it is important to understand the definition of leadership.
According to Bennis and Nanus (1985), “leadership is the most studied and least understood topic of any in all of social sciences”. Many scholars have defined the term “leadership” in many ways. According to Rost (1991), there are more than 100 scholarly definitions can be found on leadership that has been developed by various business scholars. Grint (2004) opined that, “Leadership appears to be, like power, an ‘essentially contested concept’”. Bennis and Nanus (1985) gave another excellent comment on the concept of an ideal leader. According to them, a leader is “the abominable snowman, whose footprints are everywhere but who is nowhere to be seen”.
Leaders are one of those persons who influence others by their daily course of actions. They are excellent at formulating and implementing plans. What sets successful leaders apart is the ability to organize, collaborate and support their subordinates to get closer towards achieving organization’s goals and objectives. They should appreciate change and have the courage to speak against the status quo. They need to be prompt and precise in making critical decisions that lead the organization towards success. Moreover, leaders are responsible to develop and maintain a friendly environment that helps nourish and train future leaders so that the talented people who have a great potential of becoming future leader can learn by observing the activities of their supervising leaders. They should be able to develop the capability of understanding what motivates people to outperform and what affects their behavior to change.
Leaders play a variety of roles in an organizational context. Different types of roles of leaders are discussed below. It is recommended for the members of the Awards Committee to consider these roles as the major criteria on which the prizes will be awarded.
Primary role of a leader:
One significant role that carries most weight in evaluating the performance of a leader is the capability of developing the future leaders. In order for organizations to be succeeded in creating future leaders, the Board of Directors must assist the senior leadership team to design and establish a complete succession planning process that will meet the standard of the organization. The succession planning process should include setting up the selection criteria and recruiting the right person for the right position; outlining the core values, cultures, objectives, mission and vision; formulating the organizational strategy for long term success, determining which leadership style to be adopted, and deciding how the performance will be measured. Finally, leaders are also responsible for monitoring the progress of the succession planning process and taking corrective actions if they find anything not suiting their arrangement.
Contemporary leadership roles:
In the context of a contemporary small and medium size business organization, there are four major leadership roles that every leader should be able to accomplish.
1. Providing team leadership
Leaders are responsible for forming and developing effective teams. They need to guide the team members to accomplish organization objectives. As a team leader, managers motivate their subordinates perform and their best and get the job done in a consistent manner. The overall performance of teams mostly depends on the capability and skill sets of the team leader. High performing leaders are more likely to build successful teams. Team leaders should be able to approach the right leadership style based on the perspective organizational work environment. They should be fully equipped to handle the change process. They are also responsible to act as a liaison between the external and internal sources of the organization. They also need to be very responsive to new challenges; able to perform quick troubleshooting when a problem arises; and able to manage conflicts among team members.
2. Mentoring
Mentors are experienced advisors who support middle level managers and other employees of organization. Mentors are the role model who influences other employees. Organizations have different types of formal mentoring programs where the senior managers are usually assigned as mentor to lead and educate less experienced and young individuals of the organization. The role and responsibility of mentors is thoroughly voluntary and is carried out with the other managerial responsibilities. Leader’s role as mentor is to help their subordinates to grow within the culture of the organization and drive productivity and effectiveness in the areas of their work.
3. Self leadership
Self leadership is a procedure through which individuals develop and enrich their own behavior and point of view in the context of particular organization. Successful leaders are aware of the self-leadership concept. They practice and evaluate their self-leadership approach on a regular basis. Self-leadership includes, but not limited to, various managerial activities such as setting personal goals, constantly practicing discretion, taking initiative, giving credits to others, being open to accept ideas, experimenting new ideas, being a continuous learner, etc.
4. Online leadership
Most of the studies on leadership have been carried out based on face-to face and verbal leadership perspective. But, in today’s business, managers are often using different types of online communication media, such as email, to communicate with their subordinates. While it is comparatively convenient to give verbal command, non-verbal message is often difficult to convey the exact meaning. For example, one cannot “read” another person’s mind without seeing his facial expression. Therefore, leaders must have a good grasp of communicating via online media. They need to develop comprehensible and precise writing skill to be able to provide proper instructions to their subordinates. Moreover, they need to be able to use all latest digital communication means. They need figure how to convey trust, status, task directions, and emotional warmth through using proper sentence format (i.e. using capitalize, bold, italic, underlined words to convey urgency, importance and priority and using emoticons to convey emotional warmth).
Rost, J.C. (1991) Leadership for the Twenty-First Century. Westport: Praeger
Grint, K. (2004) ‘What is leadership? From hydra to hybrid’. Paper presented at the EIASM Workshop on Leadership Research, Saïd Business School and Templeton College, Oxford, December.
According to Bennis and Nanus (1985), “leadership is the most studied and least understood topic of any in all of social sciences”. Many scholars have defined the term “leadership” in many ways. According to Rost (1991), there are more than 100 scholarly definitions can be found on leadership that has been developed by various business scholars. Grint (2004) opined that, “Leadership appears to be, like power, an ‘essentially contested concept’”. Bennis and Nanus (1985) gave another excellent comment on the concept of an ideal leader. According to them, a leader is “the abominable snowman, whose footprints are everywhere but who is nowhere to be seen”.
Leaders are one of those persons who influence others by their daily course of actions. They are excellent at formulating and implementing plans. What sets successful leaders apart is the ability to organize, collaborate and support their subordinates to get closer towards achieving organization’s goals and objectives. They should appreciate change and have the courage to speak against the status quo. They need to be prompt and precise in making critical decisions that lead the organization towards success. Moreover, leaders are responsible to develop and maintain a friendly environment that helps nourish and train future leaders so that the talented people who have a great potential of becoming future leader can learn by observing the activities of their supervising leaders. They should be able to develop the capability of understanding what motivates people to outperform and what affects their behavior to change.
Leaders play a variety of roles in an organizational context. Different types of roles of leaders are discussed below. It is recommended for the members of the Awards Committee to consider these roles as the major criteria on which the prizes will be awarded.
Primary role of a leader:
One significant role that carries most weight in evaluating the performance of a leader is the capability of developing the future leaders. In order for organizations to be succeeded in creating future leaders, the Board of Directors must assist the senior leadership team to design and establish a complete succession planning process that will meet the standard of the organization. The succession planning process should include setting up the selection criteria and recruiting the right person for the right position; outlining the core values, cultures, objectives, mission and vision; formulating the organizational strategy for long term success, determining which leadership style to be adopted, and deciding how the performance will be measured. Finally, leaders are also responsible for monitoring the progress of the succession planning process and taking corrective actions if they find anything not suiting their arrangement.
Contemporary leadership roles:
In the context of a contemporary small and medium size business organization, there are four major leadership roles that every leader should be able to accomplish.
1. Providing team leadership
Leaders are responsible for forming and developing effective teams. They need to guide the team members to accomplish organization objectives. As a team leader, managers motivate their subordinates perform and their best and get the job done in a consistent manner. The overall performance of teams mostly depends on the capability and skill sets of the team leader. High performing leaders are more likely to build successful teams. Team leaders should be able to approach the right leadership style based on the perspective organizational work environment. They should be fully equipped to handle the change process. They are also responsible to act as a liaison between the external and internal sources of the organization. They also need to be very responsive to new challenges; able to perform quick troubleshooting when a problem arises; and able to manage conflicts among team members.
2. Mentoring
Mentors are experienced advisors who support middle level managers and other employees of organization. Mentors are the role model who influences other employees. Organizations have different types of formal mentoring programs where the senior managers are usually assigned as mentor to lead and educate less experienced and young individuals of the organization. The role and responsibility of mentors is thoroughly voluntary and is carried out with the other managerial responsibilities. Leader’s role as mentor is to help their subordinates to grow within the culture of the organization and drive productivity and effectiveness in the areas of their work.
3. Self leadership
Self leadership is a procedure through which individuals develop and enrich their own behavior and point of view in the context of particular organization. Successful leaders are aware of the self-leadership concept. They practice and evaluate their self-leadership approach on a regular basis. Self-leadership includes, but not limited to, various managerial activities such as setting personal goals, constantly practicing discretion, taking initiative, giving credits to others, being open to accept ideas, experimenting new ideas, being a continuous learner, etc.
4. Online leadership
Most of the studies on leadership have been carried out based on face-to face and verbal leadership perspective. But, in today’s business, managers are often using different types of online communication media, such as email, to communicate with their subordinates. While it is comparatively convenient to give verbal command, non-verbal message is often difficult to convey the exact meaning. For example, one cannot “read” another person’s mind without seeing his facial expression. Therefore, leaders must have a good grasp of communicating via online media. They need to develop comprehensible and precise writing skill to be able to provide proper instructions to their subordinates. Moreover, they need to be able to use all latest digital communication means. They need figure how to convey trust, status, task directions, and emotional warmth through using proper sentence format (i.e. using capitalize, bold, italic, underlined words to convey urgency, importance and priority and using emoticons to convey emotional warmth).
Reference:
Bennis,
W. and Nanus, B. (1985) Leaders: the Strategies for Taking Charge. New York: Harper
and Row
Rost, J.C. (1991) Leadership for the Twenty-First Century. Westport: Praeger
Grint, K. (2004) ‘What is leadership? From hydra to hybrid’. Paper presented at the EIASM Workshop on Leadership Research, Saïd Business School and Templeton College, Oxford, December.